Irrational Fears?

There are many of us who have irrational fears. Just so that you know, it took all I had within me to post these 5 pictures of probably my top five irrational fears. And, these are just pictures. It truly makes me cringe. 

Let me begin by sharing my experiences with these 5 scary critters. Let's just start with the snake. Really, lucky for me at this point, I have not had a real live, totally me alone experience with one or more snakes. However, when moving day came, I was out on the patio with the moving company workers when one of them picked up a large potted plant and a snake came out. He screamed so loudly, that it caused me to scream and all I saw was the end of the snake slithering off away from us. Obviously, this young man was not fond of snakes any more than I was. This was my one and only encounter, probably because I do not tend to put my hands or feet in places where snakes or who knows what could be lurking. (Including the pool filters at clean up time.)

Next, I will move on to cockroaches. As an adult, at one point, I lived in the North as a transplant Southerner. All of my time in the South, I had not encountered roaches in our home or inside buildings. The school that I was working at had these horrible things in a supply closet. When the door was opened they scurried up the walls and across the floor. Never again did I go in the supply closet. I either requested something that I needed or I just went out to buy it myself. Have you ever stepped on one? No way! The custodian went in the closet when she heard my scream and started stomping on them. Oh my! That crunching sound did me in as badly as actually seeing them alive. Also, I was informed that these were not cockroaches, but water bugs. Baloney! Water bugs look somewhat like cockroaches but live in water. There was NO water in that supply closet.

It seems the two places that I have observed roaches the most were in two schools that I have worked, one in the North and one in the South. I quickly learned that in my office in the South, many times no one would be around so I kept a can of Aqua Net Hair Spray in my drawer. When I saw one, I sprayed it until it was in a pool of hard to hold hairspray.  It froze him up. Then I would call the custodian to sweep him away. We were not to have insecticides in the building. This worked so much better in my opinion because not only did it kill the 6 legged nasty things, the room smelled pretty, as well.

Spiders! What can I say? We have a company that comes out to spray for termites and anything else. The technician comes in and sprays the baseboards and for no extra charge, if I see any spiders before his next quarterly visit, all I have to do is call. Believe me, I do. This man is a saint. Why? Because, he never makes fun of my fear of these things. One morning, I woke up to a spider bite on my forehead. It looked horrible and actually, if you look hard enough, you can still see the remains. Concealer works well now. For about three months, nothing concealed it. I sprayed in our bedroom every single night. I had sticky traps all throughout our bedroom. Yes, they would get stuck on the traps. Some little ones, but mostly fairly large wood spiders. So gross!

In our home in Pennsylvania, we had a basement. Almost all homes up there have basements. One time there was a problem with mice getting in the basement. My husband at that time set traps and took care of it. It really was yucky to think about mice in our house, but I consoled myself with the fact that I did not go in the basement. It was a scary place to me anyway. 

Then one morning, I woke up and was making the bed when what did I discover? Along the nightstands on both sides of the bed? Mouse droppings. This was two floors up from the basement. Those horrible creatures were now in my living space. That was the final straw. This is when I knew that I was irrational, and I would do it again. I showed my former husband and he said that he would take care of it with traps. Oh no, no, no! I was not sleeping next to traps going off in the night, much less putting my head down on a pillow where one could run over my pillow and me where I was sleeping. I did what any SANE person would do. I packed my bag and moved into the Holiday Inn until it was proven that the mice had been taken care of, never to return. One child wanted to come with me and one wanted to stay with his Dad. There was no evidence of mice in their rooms, so I agreed to this. It took one full week! I don't know what was done exactly, all I know and all I cared about was the fact that they were now gone and did not seem to be returning. I felt safe.

Now for the big story. It was not until the other day when a friend reminded me of this story. On Facebook, a music teacher posted that a soprano in a New York opera hit a high note that no one had ever hit before. My good friend, replied that she begged to differ because she remembered the day that I had hit that note when a rat from the pipes in the open ceilings above me (open due to remodeling of the school) fell down at my feet, broke its back and was just laying dead two feet from me. 

In record time, I let out a scream that was heard throughout the entire school. I watched as teachers up and down the hallways were poking their heads out of their classroom doors to see what was that sound. I had a walkie-talkie radio and was trying to call the custodian, the office, just anyone at all, however, I was so terrified that nothing I said made any sense at all. In fact, the office could not imagine who got hold of the radio and was making this nonsense talk on it. The front secretary made her way running down the hallway to me and got me in my office and seated. 

Actually, she called the school nurse to come over to help get me calm. To say that I was a basket case would be an understatement. To this day, I remember my neck being massaged, being told to 

breathe in/out slowly. They called the other administrator, who was out of the building at a meeting and his suggestion was to just send me home for the rest of the day. I will say that he shared with me that after having the conversation with the secretary and nurse and realizing that I was going to be okay  -  he began laughing out loud. This of course, made the whole room full of administrators ask what was going on and so the story goes. 

There is karma and I do so strongly believe what goes around will come around. I had no idea that this very large man was terrified of mice. I don't have a problem with anyone being terrified of mice. However, when he was in his office a few months later after my rat incident, I walked in to watch him literally jump straight up in the air to land on his desk to avoid having this one mouse run over his feet. I so wish that I had a camera, but alas, I did not. All I could do was share this story with others, just as he had shared my story. Fair play!

Now, with all of the above irrational fears shared with you, my readers...I will share one more little secret. My novel that I am working on has a few great stories of three women, of three generations, dealing with mice in their new home. Whether or not if you are against or for guns, once you read a part of my book, you will see that there are some people who should not ever be allowed a gun, my dear, wonderful, irrational Mother would be one of them. 

My irrational trait on some things came through the DNA. Luckily, I believe that the symptoms did calm down some because never, ever have I had someone take the phone from my hands to stop me from calling 911 about a mouse in the house. Nor have I held a gun to try to shoot one inside the house. As if she had the shooting ability to hit something that small, even if her hands were not trembling? 

Let's just all be aware that many of us have fears about one thing or another. It has been said that there are two kinds of fears; rational and irrational - or in simple terms, fears that make sense and fears that don't. This definition was taken partly from one of the Lemony Snicket series.